Richard P Feynman quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Richard P Feynman

Top Richard P Feynman Quotes

Browse top 87 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Richard P Feynman.

Favorite Richard P Feynman Quotes

1. "Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry." ~ Richard P. Feynman

2. "If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize." ~ Richard P. Feynman

3. "We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on." ~ Richard P. Feynman

4. "I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." ~ Richard P. Feynman

5. "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." ~ Richard P. Feynman

6. "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?" ~ Richard P. Feynman

7. "Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate." ~ Richard P. Feynman

8. "I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe." ~ Richard P. Feynman

9. "It was thought in the Middle Ages that people simply make many observations, and the observations themselves suggest the laws. But it does not work that way. It takes much more imagination than that.So the next thing we have to talk about is where the new ideas come from. Actually, it does not make any difference, as long as they come." ~ Richard P. Feynman

10. "If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror." ~ Richard P. Feynman

11. "Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true." ~ Richard P. Feynman

12. "Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion." ~ Richard P. Feynman

13. "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar." ~ Richard P. Feynman

14. "I think nature's imagination Is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax" ~ Richard P. Feynman

15. "Of course, I am interested, but I would not dare to talk about them. In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other." ~ Richard P. Feynman

16. "THE QUESTION IS, OF COURSE, IS IT GOING TO BE POSSIBLE TO AMALGAMATE EVERYTHING,AND MERELY DISCOVER THAT THIS WORLD REPRESENTS DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF ONE THING?" ~ Richard P. Feynman

17. "Mathematics is a language plus reasoning; it is like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning." ~ Richard P. Feynman

18. "To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell. And so it is with science." ~ Richard P. Feynman

19. "In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." ~ Richard P. Feynman

20. "Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn." ~ Richard P. Feynman

21. "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring." ~ Richard P. Feynman

22. "What do I advise? Forget it all. Don't be afraid. Do what you get the most pleasure from. Is it to build a cloud chamber? Then go on doing things like that. Develop your talents wherever they may lead. Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!If you have any talent,or any occupation that delights you,do it, and do it to the hilt" ~ Richard P. Feynman

23. "You see, I get so much fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick." ~ Richard P. Feynman

24. "In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it; then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right; then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong." ~ Richard P. Feynman

25. "Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile." ~ Richard P. Feynman

26. "For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?" ~ Richard P. Feynman

27. "I wouldn't stop until I figured the damn thing out–it would take me fifteen or twenty minutes. But during the day, other guys would come to me with the same problem, and I'd do it for them in a flash. So for one guy, to do it took me twenty minutes, while there were five guys who thought I was a super-genius." ~ Richard P. Feynman

28. "Prof. Wheeler was called away last night so I took over his course in mechanics for the day. I spent all last night preparing. It went very nicely and smoothly. It was a good experience---I guess I'll do a lot of that." ~ Richard P. Feynman

29. "You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." ~ Richard P. Feynman

30. "Naturwissenschaft ist der Glaube an die Unwissenheit der Experten." ~ Richard P. Feynman

31. "The taxi driver felt that it was a good observation, and said he was planning to build for the future, too: he had some money on the horses, and if he won, he would buy his own taxicab, and really do well.I felt very sorry. I told him that betting on the horses was a bad idea, but he insisted it was the only way he could do it. He had such good intentions, but his method was going to be luck.I wasn't going to go on philosophizing, so he took me to a place where there was a steel band playing some great calypso music, and I had an enjoyable afternoon." ~ Richard P. Feynman

32. "Odiaría morir dos veces, sería tan aburrido!." ~ Richard P. Feynman

33. "Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible." ~ Richard P. Feynman

34. "Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough." ~ Richard P. Feynman

35. "I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me." ~ Richard P. Feynman

36. "The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination, in a tight straightjacket." ~ Richard P. Feynman

37. "We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into the paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers... one saying to the other: you don't know what you are talking about! The second one says: what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?" ~ Richard P. Feynman

38. "To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in." ~ Richard P. Feynman

39. "You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!" ~ Richard P. Feynman

40. "I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!" ~ Richard P. Feynman

41. "I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!" ~ Richard P. Feynman

42. "A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven." ~ Richard P. Feynman

43. "Thank you very Much, I enjoyed myself" ~ Richard P. Feynman

44. "[Doubt] is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas bought in - a trial-and-error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar...doubt is not to be feared, but welcomed and discussed." ~ Richard P. Feynman

45. "You can't say A is made of B or vice versa. All mass is interaction." ~ Richard P. Feynman

46. "It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama." ~ Richard P. Feynman

47. "If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question...you may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world." ~ Richard P. Feynman

48. "What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." ~ Richard P. Feynman

49. "I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong." ~ Richard P. Feynman

50. "There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." ~ Richard P. Feynman

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